Maria Pol’s body of work explores our contemporary material culture and socio-political topics including the devastating impacts of climate change and excessive consumption of plastics and other waste materials. She feels compelled to raise awareness and uses clay significantly as a material to conserve our present reality, evoking an association to archaeological records of our time.

FRAGMENTS

This piece is inspired by excessive plastic waste that is abandoned on beaches and other natural environments. It is made of ceramic fragments that cast plastic bottles, cans of cleaning products, ready-to-make food trays and so on that have been used on a daily basis. 
The colourful print of each object is coated with a sandy surface, and placed together to suggest a framed section of a polluted beach.
The piece attempts to give an ethnographic look on consumption, indicating that our waste is already turning into archaeological fragments of our time that carry cultural significance.